Batman Arkham Knight

Two facts became abundantly clear on the news conference day of E3. The first is that Sony once again dominated the unofficial start of the show with one huge announcement after another. The second is that though there are going to be great-looking games coming this year (Far Cry 4, The Crew, Destiny and Evolve), everything I want to play is scheduled for 2015.

That was the general theme of this year’s briefings starting with Microsoft. The Redmond, Washington-based company had a solid kick-off with Sunset Overdrive headlining the first-party offerings and Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare leading the third-party games. But I was more intrigued with the trailers for aTomb Raider and Crackdown. The biggest surprise was that renowned game designer Hideki Kamiya has a new action title called Scalebound in the works.

Rocksteady’s Dax Ginn sounds like he’s had 10 cups of coffee in the past hour and he’s unleashing all of it on us. He exudes enthusiasm usually reserved for Jim Cramer as he shouts off the new features of Batman: Arkham Knight.

“When we were finishing of Arkham City in 2011, we thought about where we wanted to go next,” he said. “We always had the idea of a trilogy of games. This was going to be the epic conclusion to the trilogy of Arkham games. We did that. We wanted to leave it all out.”

And what the studio did was make the Batman title that fans have dreamed about. It’s the natural evolution of the series from small island to borough and from borough to full-blown city. Now, the team gives players Gotham in its entirety and it ended up being 20 times bigger than Arkham Asylum, according to Ginn. That’s an intimidating piece of real estate.